Responding to trauma: restoring social connection in countertransference

Trauma psychoanalysis

Abstract

Various theories of trauma and transgenerational transmission of traumatic experiences have provided a wealth of valuable clinical insights, ultimately leading to a number of empirically grounded approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have experienced trauma. The limitations observed in these approaches have led some trauma-oriented researchers and clinicians to explore the role of not only symptoms, and the importance of working with them, but also the need to include an analysis of the psychoanalytic patient- psychoanalyst relationship as a key element in psychoanalytic treatment. And it is not about the school of object relations, but about finding the response of unconscious affect in the psyche of the other. In our view, the study of transference and countertransference is the foundation of contemporary theory of psychic trauma transmission, although even at present research and clinical interventions dealing with psychic trauma are largely disconnected from the insights of contemporary countertransference and transference theory in psychoanalytic work.

This article proposes an expanded understanding of the psychoanalytic analyst-patient relationship, taking into account the historical context. The article also attempts to emphasize the need to view psychoanalytic work with the effects of psychic trauma from the perspective of the psychoanalyst-patient dyad and the psychoanalytic relationship, and considers their relevance to work with psychic trauma (both individual and collective) by analyzing the transference and countertransference that arise in psychoanalytic treatment.